I wanted to work in tech but now I don’t see the point. I’m not using AI.
WTF, am I Catholic now?
Despite being illustrated with a stock photo of the Catholic Pope and mentioning his recent remarks on AI further down, the article notes that this person was granted a religious exception based on Unitarian Universalist practice, not Catholicism.
For those unfamiliar, Unitarian Universalism is an inclusive and diverse movement centered around common ethical principles which basically boil down to “you do you, just don’t be a dick.”
Still not worth the label
As a former catholic. I agree
Fuck it, better than having to explain why the economic and environmental ramifications every time to every one. Plus I get a few new cool holidays.
Guess I’m a Catholic now
As a manager, I don’t give a rats ass if you use AI. If you’re performing on par with your peers and you know and own your stuff, you’re safe.
Honestly, that last part is crucial and I’ve hd to remind some of my employees that using Claude is cool and all, but at the end of the day, you own it and I’m going to ask and assume you know it or we’re going to have a serious performance discussion. I can hire anyone to prompt Claude for me, what you bring to the table is what sets you apart.
As a manager, I want all my reports to be familiar with AI. I want them to know how to use it, how it will fail, but most importantly, how to recognize if something they’re working on has been touched by AI and what processes need to be followed if it has.
Because the thing that’s worse than junior devs not knowing what their code does is when they slip it into production and someone attempting to make updates doesn’t realize the code doesn’t follow human logic and may not do what they think it does.
When I ask the younger devs at work about their code they often tell me what they asked Claude to do instead of telling me what their code does. It’s so frustrating.
And yet, that’s all my boss wants of me. “Does a dev really need to understand the code if the AI understands it?”
That’s frustrating.
(The AI does not, in fact, understand it. The AI doesn’t understand anything at all. It’s a statistical text prediction machine.)
It sounds like your boss needs to stop being anyone’s boss. That kind of view is going to lead to piles of tech debt and everything that comes with it.
I mean, I haven’t worked at any company that doesn’t have a decade or more of tech debt all human-made.
Is this any worse such a regard?
I do not advocate for more bullshit, but I don’t really think that this will make a big difference either way.
AI seems like it will help the already bad bosses do more - which seems like a bad thing. It’s better if the bad ones just wank off in the toilet all day.
I think how much difference it will make in the long run will depend on who gets sacked and who survives.
By the time that’s a problem, he will have failed upwards because of his ‘forward-thinking’ AI push.
Does a dev really need to understand the code if the AI understands it?
That if is doing a lot of lifting here, because AI doesn’t understand anything, it only finds mathematical responses to your question. There’s a reason the AI can’t give you the same script twice (or it constantly rewrites the fucking thing instead of just fixing the thing I told it to)
These models do have some form of understanding though. There are features for bugs and typos, and general features that map descriptions and pieces of code. It understands the code in so far it helps with next token prediction.
The bigger problem is that these language models are inherently unreliable and stochastic in how they generate. You request a feature - and it destroys something else in the process - because a single incorrect prediction caused it to diverge and skip a portion of the original code. You request a small modification - and it decides to restart from scratch - because random sampling made a different way of doing something more likely rather than what was there already. Errors compound and the model has no way of fixing or correcting them.
While I agree on the second paragraph, I’m gonna argue about the first, partially because I think the second invalidates the first.
These models do have some form of understanding though. There are features for bugs and typos, and general features that map descriptions and pieces of code.
The models don’t understand anything, they have rules that allow for finding tokens that don’t belong and fuzzy match to correct tokens (typos) and the ability to find code that breaks known rules for a language. That is no more understanding the problem than my spelling or grammar checking understands the comment I’m writing. ‘Understanding’ something requires intelligence and the ability to learn something and incorporate that knowledge into itself and use it to better process that information, not just finding tokens that break rules.
It understands the code in so far it helps with next token prediction.
And this is the crux of my beef, I think, because stochastic pattern matching is not understanding, it’s a mathematical representation of how the model processes your input tokens. The fact that it has to start over every time you provide it input, and uses the previous input/output tokens as context is why this is not ‘understanding’, it’s just fancy token prediction that gives a middling-to-passable facsimile to intelligence and understanding things.
The problems you note in your second paragraph fundamentally undermine the argument that there is any form of understanding to the AI, because those are basic mistakes that a trivial understanding of the problem would prevent.
thats crazy yo me.
i have a contrast fpr you - there is a younger guy at work who transitioned from more of an analyst to a dev. i work with helping all the devs but because he doesnt have the background he needs extra help. he has used ai more to help him. i have helped him use guardrails and to be precise so he doesnt go down rabbit holes. BUT… after ai helps him get there he takes the time to learn and understand what he has done so he can get there on his own in the future
this is how it should be. it drives me nuts that actual developers at your job have no idea what they are doing
I recently proposed a solution to my boss (who’s older than I am, but not by much) regarding a technical problem we have been having the last few days. He said “that won’t get you anywhere. Ask Gemini.”
Reluctantly, I did. Besides asking it how to disable it, it was the first time I (sort of) voluntarily interacted with it.
It made three suggestions. Two didn’t work. The other one was the solution I proposed to my boss. I told him that (more politely) and he said he wasn’t really interested in addressing the problem anyway and that I should move on.
I’ve gotten this shit from all sorts of people (note: I am not in software dev)
I just repeat my question until they either answer it or fuck off without me doing whatever they wanted me to do, because no I’m not going to waste my time with your half finished work
Uhh the “performing on par with your peers” part is doing a lot of work here. It’s like saying, I don’t care if you’re doing speed at work, as long as you’re working as fast as everyone else. Except AI affects everyone on the planet, not just yourself.
Except doing drugs is illegal, whereas using AI is not. Fairly important distinction.
Popplio use the Satanic Temple playbook, that’s new.
Edit: nevermind, it’s unitarian universalist.
Can an atheist get the same exception by saying we don’t believe in Roko’s Basilisk so we won’t help bring it into being?
Ah the irationallist?
Actually, the Aristocrats.
If you didn’t believe in it you wouldn’t care
Ooh a Unitarian. Don’t even have to be Catholic. I used to hang with unitarians. Some good folks there.
A scientific pantheist would be a shoe-in for this exception.
This seems utterly silly. It’s like saying “I don’t believe we should use the internet it’s against my religion” and then trying to work a tech job without it.
Maybe I can go to work in a tech company and object to computers. I only use a typewriter. I also rode a horse to get here.
This only seems like it could backfire on the individual. Everyone else in the company is going to use it and come midyear review, they will have run laps around you and your pile of sticky notes and spreadsheets, using your inbox like a filing system.
My religion does not permit me to use Agile. I only track my work on a notepad I keep in my drawer. I won’t go to the daily stand, won’t participate in sprint planning nor PI planning. Hey, why is everyone getting more done than I am?
This only seems like it could backfire on the individual. Everyone else in the company is going to use it and come midyear review, they will have run laps around you and your pile of sticky notes and spreadsheets, using your inbox like a filing system.
Talk about cope
That’s not how anything works.
That’s like saying “We can’t do anything about hiring discrimination against people in wheelchairs because what if one wants to be a firefighter?” Employers must give reasonable accomodations, which, if provided, enable an employee to do the job. If you have a tech job and have a moral objection to computers or the internet, you won’t be able to do your job and that is not a reasonable accommodation.
All this means is that a manager can’t force you to use AI so long as you’re able to meet performance standards without it. It’s incredibly reasonable and your argument is completely disconnected from reality.
